Wednesday, October 7, 2009

A common method of non-urgent hospital communication between doctors and nurses is the post-it note. I'll open a chart, and find a post-it in the progress notes saying: "Dr.- Can patient take his fish oil pills from home?" or "Dr.- Patient says she also takes Synthroid. Can you please order this?"

So this afternoon on rounds I found the following note in one of my hospital patient's charts. (NOTE- for my non-medical readers, PRN means "when needed")

26 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Was he admitted with chest pain? I would hate to guess how many times that gets checked on med rec forms to continue without anyone paying attention to what they are checking. I can't believe someone would leave a hand written note to try to get you to order it!!

When I worked at the hospital pharmacy, we had a bet going as to when we would see our first Viagra ordered on admission after it was approved. I said 2 weeks after it came to market. I won. My prize was to go and verbally bitch-slap the nurse that wrote out the "continue all meds as at home" order. I also got to verbally abuse the doc who approved the order, though I was much nicer to him. Doctors are delicate creatures, present company excluded.

"For all you know I'm really a Mongolian yak herder and have no medical training at all except in issues regarding the care and feeding of Mongolian yaks"

He is entirely unqualified to speak about yaks. For example,

Pure-breeding is the predominant practice with yak. Apart from a scheme involving selection in crossbreds of wild yak with domestic yak in a process of breed development (see Chapter 2), no information has become available on rigorous selection programmes consistently applied for the improvement of the performance of yak in China. However, some selection schemes appear to be under consideration both in China and other countries. The dearth of organized selection schemes is not surprising with an absence of written records of performance and pedigrees and because of the location of yak in harsh environments and remote regions. Herdsmen in some areas, such as those of the Jiulong yak, have a traditional system of selection for replacement bulls. The Jiulong scheme considers the performances of the sires and maternal performance, as well as the physical appearance of the individual. It has to be remembered that the capacity to survive must be one of the chief attributes in the genetic makeup of the yak. This characteristic is likely to be under constant pressure from natural selection.

Dr. Cheerful's failure to inform you of this important information proves you should not trust him for information on the care and breeding of your yak.

There is reason to believe there is no labeled indication for the use of Cialis, Viagra, or Levitra in the domesticated yak population based on studies submitted to the FDA. I'm pretty sure about that. Whether any of these drugs affect hair growth, pediatric, nursing, and other special populations, or are even passed into breast milk usually doesn't impact those for whom the drug is indicated is another matter.

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This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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